Wow guys thanks for all of the replies. I wrote this months ago and totally forgot all about this thread and just found it again. If anyone has any improvements or suggestions I will be happy to add them.

Wow guys thanks for all of the replies. I wrote this months ago and totally forgot all about this thread and just found it again. If anyone has any improvements or suggestions I will be happy to add them.

Hi All,
thanks for the guide!

I was noticing that on my core 2 duo processor laptop it is not possible to set different frequencies for the two cores. Is that normal?

To op: Heres a simple script that allows one to select the modes without the manual hassle of cat <governor> /sys/.... for each core or without having to go overkill and use kpowersave. n00b scripting but it gets the job done =)

To lutra: yes, for C2D/Q all cores have to be set to the same governor to be in effect. Think the upcoming Phenoms from AMD will allow seperate core speeds.

The basic idea is this: Since you always have to keep the northbridge running, power usages scale slower than cpu speed increases. This means it is faster to jump to the highest speed and then back down to idle, because it takes longer to perform the same operations at a slower speed.